This report is focused around Lost and Found data using the intakes and outcomes data received for 2019-2021 (up to September). Its goal is to reflect everything we could learn about L&F from the available data, make sure the numbers we see make sense, and highlight things that would be useful to show but some/all data required for them are missing.

Date range: 2019-01-01 to 2022-02-28

Report Structure

  1. KPIs: data points that indicate how good the shelter is doing on on L&F. They have numeric goals associated with them.
  2. Supporting data: data points that aren’t a goal themselves but serve as a proxy for improving a goal. For example, the method of RTH is not a performance indicator, but it helps identifying how RTHs take place. The number of strays found per ZIP code is not a metric to improve, but it shows where most strays are coming from to guide resource allocation.
  3. Data notes: the state of the data received from the shelter.
  4. Extra metrics: some ideas for additional L&F metrics and the data points they require.

Scroll down or use the table of contents on the left to navigate throughout the document. Most sections contain multiple tabs showing different facets of a data type. Most plots are interactive, meaning they include tooltips and allow hiding and showing parts and zooming in and out. If something went wrong, look for the house icon in the top right corner of each figure to reset.

KPIs

Yearly RTH Rates by Species

This table covers all strays and RTHs. RTH rates shown below are the number of strays with RTH outcomes out of all strays.

When we go over this, let’s make sure we calculate the rate the same way you do, so we would want to make sure what we see makes sense. If these numbers are right, the 2021 figure is right around the HASS average for dogs which is at 30% RTH rate and higher than the 2% average for cats.

Species Year Strays RTH_Count RTH_Rate
Cat 2019 1701 42 2.47%
Cat 2020 1460 48 3.29%
Cat 2021 1652 82 4.96%
Cat 2022 185 17 9.19%
Dog 2019 2882 703 24.39%
Dog 2020 2447 606 24.77%
Dog 2021 3610 1067 29.56%
Dog 2022 687 198 28.82%

RTH Over Time

These three time series show the RTH rate per month, to show whether there were times with particularly high or low rates as well as the overall trajectory.

Overall

This figure shows RTH rates for all intakes combined. There has been a steady increase from early 2020 (but more noticeably August 2020) to about March 2021, where the RTH rate stabilizes around 30%. Cat RTH rate are lower in the summer, as one could expect.

Field Intakes (Dogs)

This trend is quite different from the overall one – there are lots of ups and downs but without a consistent improvement over time since 2019.

Public Drop Off

This trend, however, is responsible for the improvement of overall return rates shown in the Overall tab, as most intakes are Public Drop Offs. The improvement starts around August 2020 and continues.

Stray Intakes

This section shows the number of stray intakes over time, as well as the breakdown of strays by field/shelter intake, primarily to give us some context for the rest of the data seeing how many animals are coming in. It is probably not anything you don’t already know.

Stray Intakes by Month

Length of Stay Differences - RTH v. Other Outcomes

The average difference in length of stay (in days) between strays with RTH outcomes and all other strays is shown in the table below – roughly 17 days for dogs and 33 for cats. That means that every successful RTH saves 17 days of care on average (for dogs) at KCPP.

We can make a cost savings calculation using these LOS numbers, the number of RTHs, and a daily cost of care if that is of interest. To offer a simple example, assuming a daily cost of care of $30, returning an extra 200 dogs in 2021 would have resulted in a $102,000 cost saving.

All Years

Species Outcome Count Average_Length_Of_Stay
Cat Other Outcomes 4777 38.48
Cat RTH 189 5.44
Dog Other Outcomes 6299 18.91
Dog RTH 2574 1.92

Cats by Year

We also noticed that when breaking down the results by year, the LOS of the RTH category is fairly constant, but the LOS for all other outcomes gradually decreases. This is most noticeable with stray cats (shown below), but a similar pattern is present for dogs and when looking at all animals as opposed to only strays.

Supporting Data

Stray Intake and RTH By Found Location - Dogs

The following maps show stray intake and RTH rate by Census tracts codes to highlight geographical patterns. The first and second tab are similar to previous metrics; the third tab, RTH Gap, shows the number of strays who were not returned home per Census tract

There was a total of 14822 stray animals in the data. About 300 had the shelter’s address as their found location so they were removed. A further 600 animals had an address that could not be mapped – mostly street names without an intersection or a number. All the remaining ones were geocoded (converted into a lat-lng pair) using Google Maps API and then the corresponding census tract was found for each pair. About 500 animals were incorrectly mapped to the same geolocation downtown and had to be removed as well.

After this filtering, 13500 animals are mapped below. This section maps 8893 dogs, and the following shows 4362 cats. 244 animals of other species are not mapped due to their lower quantity (but if that’s interesting we can definitely add them).

Stray Intake

RTH Rate

This is a fairly common pattern – the areas with higher stray intake tend to have lower RTH rates (it’s easier to return a higher percentage of 10-20 dogs, of course). However, some areas with 30/40 strays stand out with 50%+ return rate.

RTH Gap

This combines the other two tabs to highlight where most additional RTH potential exists. As the RTH rate is fairly lower in high intake areas, they stand out again in this map.

Top 10 Found Locations

Here’s a sneak peak into the top 10 found locations.

Found.Location Count
Swope Park Kansas City MO 12
4135 N Kansas Ave Kansas City MO 11
6832 Sni A Bar Road Kansas City MO 11
3817 E 68th Ter KCMO 64132 10
31 and Van Brunt Kansas City MO 9
340 Bales Ave Kansas City MO 9
49th and Brooklyn Kansas City MO 9
5139 Wyandotte Kansas City MO 9
708 Utley Ave KCMO 64125 9
7th and Winner rd Kansas City MO 9

Stray Intake and RTH By Found Location - Cats

This is similar to the maps above, but for cats. Similar areas stand out to the dogs map.

Stray Intake

Top 10 Found Locations

Here’s a sneak peak into the top 10 found locations plotted above, to make sure they make sense to you.

Found.Location Count
33 and Wheeling, Kansas City MO 13
4606 NE 45th Terrace Kansas City MO 13
148 N Topping Avenue Kansas City MO 11
4209 E. 50th Terr, KCMO 11
Winner Rd and Blue Ridge Kansas City MO 11
2010 E 82nd St Kansas City MO 9
23rd and Topping Kansas City MO 9
35th and Gillham, KCMO 9
63rd St and Rockhill Rd Kansas City MO 9
75th and Autumn Kansas City MO 9

Data Notes

  1. Found addresses - as mentioned above, about 600 addresses could not be mapped because they only included a street name without a number or intersection, or general descriptions like “finders backyard”.

  2. Zip codes - as we mentioned, 10887 of the 14882 stray animals did not have a ZIP code listed. Some had a blank value, but most (10490 animals) entered as ‘Kansas City’. This meant using ZIP codes was probably not very representative.

  3. Outcome Subtype for RTH - if a return to owner in the field can take place, it is worth creating a dedicated outcome subtype for it.

Extra Metrics

Other things we could show (some requiring more data):

  1. Distances traveled by lost dogs from home, if home address is collected for successful RTH.
  2. Prevalence of microchips across town (for example, are there areas from which more animals come in without chips?) and the RTH rates for animals found with/without chips, if there is a field indicating ID scan results upon intake.
  3. Number of public found reports and successful RTH by the public (if this data is accessible to the shelter).

Thanks for reading through, and we’re looking forward to talking through it and thinking about more ways to make this data useful for you.